Product Reviews

As with many games now, I came across this game via the web, this time
through Mik Svellov's excellent site (www.brettboard.dk). Mik's description
intrigued me, I contacted the designer and a few days later the game
arrived in the post.

This is a desk top published game from Germany that requires players to work
out where the buildings were located in a ghost town. The setting is the Wild
West, which might not be the most obvious setting for a game about an
archaeological dig, but is OK.

The game board is made of thick card that does not easily bend and is
sufficient for its purpose. It depicts the roads that existed in the old town
and there is one point of reference -- the graveyard. The game system provides
clues about the location of each building through the use of cards. These
describe the clue -- for example "The parish hall is behind the post office".
(Both the parish hall and post office are buildings to be located somewhere
in Old Town.). A diagram at the bottom of each card gives you an easy way
to digest this information.

A small picture of the town and each building location is shown, with colour
coding linking the parish hall in one colour and the post office in another.
So you can quickly see the combinations of where one building could be in
relation to the other. Not only that, but a red arrow links specific
locations of the buildings. In my opinion, this is an excellent way that the
designer has found to increase playability.

Players receive a set of cards at the start and each card gives the location
clues and shows the maximum number of places that the building could be
found, with no conflicting information. Continuing with the parish hall and
post office example, the parish hall could be in 7 locations while the post
office could be in 10 possible locations. A building can be placed on the map
of the town once the positions where it would fit have been reduced to one.
This could be because other buildings have already occupied possible locations,
or because one half of a clue has already been solved. There are other ways to
reduce the possibilities, but the options at the beginning of the game are
many and generally reduce towards the end of a game.

When a clue fixes the placement of a building, the player scores the points
on the clue card (3 in my parish hall/post office card) and the building is
placed on the board. This is 1 to 4 points and is related to the maximum
number of positions that the building could have been placed -- the higher the
number, the more points are scored. This placement might trigger further
clues to be clarified and if that player places a second or further building
on that turn, a bonus is scored.

Clue cards are picked from one of two piles, but as these only become visible
after the previous player has played, there can be some down time as a player
ponders which cards to pick up.

Gradually the town is rebuilt and the options for the remaining buildings
decrease. This also speeds the game up and the game ends when all buildings
are positioned.

The game works fine, but the English translation had a few uncertainties,
which slowed up the first game considerably. Fortunately, my persistence won
out and we completed the game. Stephan has subsequently improved the
rules, and emailed a cleaner set of rules to the English speaking buyers,
much to his credit.

If you like problem solving games, then this might be one you should try.
These types of game can be rather dry, so players may find that the number of
outings this game makes is limited. Nonetheless, it is a good effort, and
other designs could benefit from the way in which the information is
displayed on the cards, so I am pleased to have picked this game up.

Other Resources for Old Town:

Board Game Geek is an incredible compilation of information about board and card games with many descriptions, photographs, reviews, session reports, and other commentary.